Tuesday, December 30, 2008

BRILLIANT SATIRE FROM VDH: WHAT "PROGRESSIVES" MIGHT ASK ISRAEL TO DO TO "EVEN THE PLAYING FIELD" AND MAKE THEIR COUNTER-ATTACK "PROPORTIONATE"...

PURE GENIUS:

Some Moderate Proposals [Victor Davis Hanson]


1) Request that 50% of Israel's air-to-ground missiles be duds to ensure greater proportionality.

2) Allow Hamas another 1,000 free rocket launches to see if they can catch up with the body count.

3) Have Israeli soldiers congregate in border barracks so that Hamas's random rockets have a better chance of killing military personnel, to ensure it can claim at least a few military targets.

4) Redefine "holocaust" to refer to deaths of terrorists in numbers under 400 to give greater credence to Hamas's current claims.

5) In the interest of fairness, allow Hamas to establish both the date that war is supposed to begin and the date when it must end.

6) Send Israeli military advisers to Hamas to improve the accuracy of their missiles.

7) Take down the barriers to return to Hamas a fair chance of getting suicide bombers back inside Israel.

The Sense of Proportion [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Over at my Washington Post discussion group, I respond to claims that Israeli military action has been excessive:

The traditional just-war standard is that military action should be "proportionate" in that it causes fewer harms than it seeks to prevent. That's a sane and sound moral standard. It does not mean that military means must inflict only as much pain as the enemy has inflicted.

My comment can be taken as an implicit response, as well, to supporters of Israel who have suggested that the just-war tradition should be at least partially abandoned. These supporters err, I think, in agreeing with many of their foes on what proportionality means.

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